God-free, not spirit-free

Yesterday, my friends and I were planning to go out for dinner in SoHo. Being in Chelsea, we decided to take the subway. While we were waiting for it, one of them suggested we move up the platform so we could get seats in the first car. As we walked, though, the train had already began pulling up, so, we decided to stop. When the doors opened, lo and behold a friend of ours from school was walking out. We said our hellos and boarded the train, and thought nothing of our random encounter the rest of the night. Until now, that is.

I began to wonder about our chance meeting. Common sense would prove, obviously, that an event like this is not unlikely; we were boarding the subway at the station closest to our school, we were pretty far downtown to begin with, suffice to say there's more of a chance someone would be uptown coming back, and it was only around 6:30; a pretty common time for someone to be don with their errands. But, now, I began to take a different approach: the odds are against us in the fact that there are millions of people in New York with millions of different time schedules; we had also first planned on boarding where we were, and then planned on boarding at the front, and ended up boarding somewhere in between. Why had we bumped into her? Was it really just random, or was there perhaps some sort of higher power involved? It seems pretty trivial, but it's amazing how such an insignificant event can spark such a train of thoughts.

I bring this up because of something a friend said when discussing my apparent atheism; she commented on how, while she understood where I was coming from, there were just too many coincidences in the world for there to be no higher power. And, on some level, I agree with that.

I still hold the belief, (the fact), that there is no god; not in the Abrahamic sense, anyway. There is no omnipotent white male spirit, judging us and intervening in every singe person's life. It's merely impossible, and, quite honestly, stupid. It's such an arbitrary belief based on tradition that I find it depressingly laudable anyone would buy into this concept. 

After yesterday's events, however, and after reconsidering all of the so-called coincidences in my life I began to wonder...is there a "god"? While modern science can prove no such abrahamic god exists, there are still things unproven; perhaps, in time, they will be, but perhaps not. It's very possible that there is some energy in the universe, some strange phenomenon, that affects the way we live and act. Karma is something I believe greatly in; not because I'm paranoid, but because of it's roots in physics: Newton's third law of motion: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. If it's possible in physical events, why not emotional? Nature has a way of naturally balancing itself out, so it's of no surprise or consequence that all of our actions are inversely proportionate to our reactions. While Karma is not the only example, it is a solid one. It may not have been proven by science quite yet, but there's enough of a balance and logic in this example to be ample. 

For now, it might be fine to accept the limits we have and simply give in to the possibility that we do not know everything and some events, such as bumping into a friend randomly in the subway, might have more meaning than you think.